The recent book by Archbishop Charles Chaput, Strangers in a StrangeLand, typifies the Church’s attack on secularism. For decades, the Church blamed its child abuse problems on secularism, first in the U.S., and later elsewhere when similar scandals broke out. Lamentations of declining morality go hand in hand with accusations of increasing secularism.

But the Church’s condemnation of secularity always involved countries with a Christian majority. In India, where Christianity is a small minority religion, we find the “universal” Catholic Church reverses its policy and preaches secularism. As The Teaching of the Apostles declared, “the double tongue is a snare of death” (2:3).